A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
John IrvingRead
We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives
Interpretation
What this quote means
Relationships can form unexpectedly and can disappear just as suddenly.
This quote by John Irving reflects on the unpredictable nature of human connections, suggesting that some people enter our lives suddenly and seemingly without warning, much like fate intervenes. It emphasizes that while we may not control how we meet others, the profound impacts of those relationships can resonate deeply, making their eventual departure feel equally unexpected and significant.
Themes
RelationshipsConnectionsFateLossFriendship
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of friendships, this quote can highlight how relationships can be both precious and fleeting.
More from John Irving
All quotes →No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.
John IrvingRead
It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.
John IrvingRead
It is an important distinction to note that she looked not only as if she had taken good care of herself, but that she had good reason to have done so. (...) She looked to be in such total possession of her life that only the most confident men could continue to look at her if she looked back at them. Even in bus stations, she was a woman who was stared at only until she looked back.
John IrvingRead
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
John IrvingRead
I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
John IrvingRead
Similar quotes
Abandonment doesn't have the sharp but dissipating sting of a slap. It's like a punch to the gut, bruising your skin and driving the precious air from your body.
Tayari JonesRead
I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.
Doris DayRead
The young girls of color that first encountered the 'me too' movement in community centers and classrooms and church basements were there not only because they needed a safe space, but because they needed their own space.
Tarana BurkeRead
You have to know how to co-operate with other people if you want to stay alive and raise children. And to do that, you need to know something about them. You need to know who loves whom, who hates whom, who is sleeping with whom. Who is honest, who is a cheat.
Yuval Noah HarariRead
Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you're the one I need
Johnny CashRead
This is not love. It is a crime... You can't look the other way just because you have not experienced domestic violence with your own flesh.
Salma HayekRead